National Service Day is celebrated

The Eastern Division of the Belize City Police Department, Wesley College and the City Council partnered today to clear graffiti from walls and fences and to clean garbage from certain areas of the city. This was a part of the institutions’ contribution to national service day in honor of the late George Cadle Price. Today, Mayor Darrell Bradley and Public Relations Coordinator for the Eastern Division, Douglas Hyde, spoke of the designated areas and the plans to beautify the city.

Darrell Bradley, Belize City Mayor

Darrell Bradley

“One of the greatest ways that we can honor his legacy is to come out and to give service during the September celebrations. So what we did today is that we organized with the police—it is actually an initiative of the police department and Wesley College and ourselves and we identified various sites throughout the city and of course the city is concerned about taking off the graffiti so we are doing most of the improvements with regards to clearing off graffiti in various sites throughout Belize City. The City Council donated all the paint and we picked three areas—through the hutment area, through Kelly Street and then also at the corner of Dean Street and East and West Canal—that we are going to be located. City Council staff will be out here—I was out here from nine to eleven doing painting and cleaning up the area. We are painting the whole hutment area, this wall behind me was filled with graffiti and we’ve cleaned that. Areas in front of the hutment area likewise, we cleaned that and the entire hutment building is filled with graffiti so we are cleaning all of those. The area by Kelly Street and East and West Canal are areas that are filled with graffiti ad we just want to give it a little bit of a transformation. Of course we can’t do this every day, all day, but it is important for us to recognize the value of community service.”

Douglas Hyde

Douglas Hyde, Public Relations Coordinator, Eastern Division

“The mayor who basically along with twenty of his staff members, the thirty students along with eighteen police officers are also collaborating in doing this venture. We think it is a great thing, we’ve literally spoken to some of the members in the community which some of them are helping us likewise and painting over these graffiti which made no sense over the years. We picked some beautiful colors as the idea of beautifying the community. And so that is the idea. We started from nine o’clock this morning to about two-three in the evening to beautify the communities. We want to do this continuously. But what we want to do is after we cover this graffiti, is to work closely with the guys in the streets and to try to do a mural comp where the competition will be who has the best designs rather than having these gang graffiti around the places. It is better to have beautiful pictures depicting their community and the ideas with it. we are in the planning stage with that and we hope by the end of October to have prizes for first second and third place within the communities and have more community spirit rather than gang signs and tag signs that we’ve seen in the neighborhood.”